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All posts for the month April, 2012

I know that y’all think that Jamie and I are pretty handy around the house. And we ARE. But there are some things better left to the professionals. Our friends are equally as talented, like our dear friend Chuck. He is a true Renaissance man and has helped us with some problems that we just couldn’t solve ourselves…..like electrical stuff.

I can wire a lamp. I can replace a ceiling fan. I can install recessed can lights, and I can even replace a switch or an outlet….usually by myself.

Chuck has helped with all the odd-ball electrical problems this house had.

He moved the garage light switch out from behind the refrigerator and into the garage. ( Behind the refrigerator???? Seriously?? )
He installed a second safety lightunder the eaves in the backyard…..when I just couldn’t fit in the attic. (I’m a big guy, I admit it)
And he moved a double switch in the living room over 14 inches through solid load-bearing studs.

Before…..see it there? Behind all the bottles?

During…Chuck positioning the new box just right….

And after…..where it should have been all along…..

We finally put Chuck to the test and asked him to replace the sad little electrical panel in our garage. Not everything about updating a home is glamorous and awe-inspiring, but necessary none the less. We are trying to document every major change that we make..and this was a big change for us.

We weren’t really sure just what was wrong with the 40 year old breaker box, just that the house inspector recommended that we replace it on his inspection.

This has got to be a scary sight for any homeowner. Each of those wires matches up with a new breaker.

The new panel housing fits right over that mess of wires, and directly in-between studs.

Chucks father is a retired master electrician, and helped out on this install. I just love an electrician in overalls. Don’t you?

After a couple of internet-less hours and buzz words flying around, like “New Dedicated Circuit”, “Demand Load Calculation”, and “Breaker Replacement”, we finally had our brand spankin’ new electrical panel. The old one was 125 amps…this baby is 200. AND, we now have a master shut off switch on the outside of the house……something to do with city ordinances….that we now comply with.

Thanks Chuck.

She’s a Beaut’!

Luckily for everyone, there is an anal retentive living here, and he used his label maker to label all the breakers.

After all, we started shopping for granite counters on February 11…..the workmen started tearing up the old kitchen on February 18.

For the past couple months, we have done some major project in the kitchen every weekend. I have actually been pretty diligent in documenting all the changes, and I’m so relieved to reveal our finished kitchen to all of you fine folks.

Just to refresh everyone’s memory, here is what we started with.

Yepp, I agree, pretty uneventful…..

And here’s what she looks like today ….

Yes, “The Bomb-Diggity” is the exact phrase we were thinking too.

When we bought the place, there was actually a fluorescent tube light fixture on the ceiling, just like in a middle-school classroom. Now there is a row of halogen cans and a glass dome pendant from West Elm.

Our Ikea Saarinan-esque table is surrounded by vintage Mercel Brewer Cesce chairs. At one time they had cane seats too ( cane seats don’t last very long ) and someone changed them to vinyl. A friend brought them over to sell in a garage sale, when they didn’t sell he offered them to me instead of dragging them back to his house. At the time, I didn’t really want them. But now, I absolutely LOVE them…each one has a numbered plaque that identifies them as property of the University of Texas. How cool is that? The cane seat-backs are definitely showing some wear and I plan to have them replaced in the near future anyway.

I’ll keep y’all posted on that process.

As y’all can tell, we kept the original base cabinets and terra-cotta floor. Then we added our own bit of jazz to make this place a little more contemporary.

Taking the upper cabinets to the ceiling made the whole room appear taller. It also increased our storage space by about 40%. Although we lost the tiny cabinet with the attached microwave, we added an entire new cabinet over the refrigerator, and built out the top of the pantry to look finished.

That springy industrial looking Hjuvik faucet from Ikea is just amazing. Unpronounceable name, great faucet. I can bend it any-which-way, or push the whole thing out-of-the-way altogether.

LOVE it!

Yes, we had wanted a farm-house sink, but reconfiguring the lower cabinet was just too much of a hassle. So we settled on one really big 28 inch undermount stainless sink….and don’t regret that decision one bit.

A vintage plate is the perfect size to wrangle dish and hand soaps, hand lotion, and sponges. If you have never tried Mrs. Meyers cleaning products, let me lead you to them right now. Lavender is by far my favorite, but other flavors include; Basil, Geranium, Rhubarb, Blue Bell, Rosemary and even a scent free. Thelma Meyer believes that cleaning products can be Earth friendly and still clean well……so do we.

Check them out.

About 15 years ago I started collecting Fiesta Ware.

I’ve always loved old California pottery, the colors are bright, but not too bright. They remind me of the painted desert. It’s hard to believe that Homer Laughlin stopped making Fiesta for about 13 years, before reviving the line in the mid-80’s because of the Baby-Boomers demand for the things that they had a children. I have tons…and when I say “tons”, I have packed and moved this stuff several times, trust me, I have “TONS”.

I pick up vintage Fiestaware, Bauer, Yellowware, and Russell Wright whenever I find them. I have an affection for chipped pieces that were obviously used and loved.

The frosted glass doors of our new upper cabinets show just a hint of the vibrant colors lurking behind each.

The Jonathan Adler whale was an anniversary gift from Jamie, he holds bottle caps because I can’t possibly throw away a bottle cap. Duhhh, I might have a project for them some day.

You could probably tell that from the name. There was an electrical outlet where the old microwave was plugged in up there before, so installation was a snap. I just removed the outlet, and hardwired the sum-bitch to the cable that used to power the outlet.

We are just going to live with that sore-thumb of a black refrigerator until we pay off the other new appliances.

The upper cabinet, just to the right of the new range, holds salt, pepper, garlic, and oils and vinegars I’ve put in upcycled hinged cork-topped bottles.

The bottles were originally sold with lemonade in them. Never do this with balsamic vinegar because it needs a dark bottle to protect it from sunlight and loosing its flavor.

Because the new upper cabinets have glass doors, we couldn’t mount the spice rack we had planned.

The next best thing was a drawer full of dried herbs and spices. Sunlight can drain the flavors from these as well, so a dark drawer is much better than a glass cabinet anyway. We rarely cook with dried herbs, fresh ones are 100 times better, but look how awesome they are all lined up like toy soldiers.

Don’t hate us because of our organizational skills. I’m working on a future post now where I show how I used wood trim pieces to keep them all in place.

The drawer on the other side of the range has a pretty clever idea as well. I always line my kitchen and bathroom drawers with self-adhesive cork shelf liners to keep things from shifting arround. But here I took it a step further and also mounted a knife magnet inside the drawer. Keeps them in place, and from dulling too quickly.

You can steal those two ideas too.

And now for the “Adults Only” part of the kitchen tour.

We finally have a real liquor cabinet. Just like big boys. No more digging to the back of the pantry for triple sec. We have it all lined up where we can see everything that we have in a glance.

This is gunna work great for parties……glasses above, ice-maker to the right, and plenty of counter space below to slice lemons etc.

LOVE IT!

Remember when we sliced PVC plumbing pipe to make our wine storage? It wasn’t that long ago. Now we have a perfect place to put our wine, where there was nothing before.

Everyone wanted to know what our solution for the microwave was.

I’ve never been a fan of the microwave hanging over the cooktop. It’s not a Bad place to put it…just not very esthetically pleasing; especially when the previous owner installed it with the side exposed and facing the rest of the house. We do use the microwave, but mostly just for steaming veggies and reheating left-overs. Rather than just put it on the counter, or even worse, a cart with wheels ( I have Never liked that look ) we hid it the best that we could in a cabinet next to the fridge.

It’s perfect for us.

I drilled a hole in the side of the cabinet to run the power cord through, and we just plugged it in with the fridge. Plenty of room in there so it has air to vent and not overheat.

Here’s a reminder of what we started with….from this…

To this….

And from this……

To this…

And that is the Grand Tour of our new kitchen. I consider it to be about 95% finished. We still have to caulk around the counter top, and I’m not sure what to do with the BIG White Door to the garage. We are tinkering with the idea of chalk-board paint…maybe in khaki…it doesn’t always have to be black, ya know.

This was, by a LANDSLIDE, the best change that we have made to the Cavender house to date……

We didn’t like the size, we didn’t like the placement, we didn’t like the scale.

NO-Sir-E, not one bit. BIG doors on the pantry…little bitty handles..

That just wasn’t cutting it for us.

We wanted something with straight modern lines, that mimicked the stainless upper cabinet doors, something like this…..

I took this picture with my phone of the hardware display at Lowe’s…..See them there in the middle of the collage? Under STUDIO.

Just what we were looking for.

In true Lowe’s fashion, not a single employee knew where to locate, or even if Lowe’s sells, those particular drawer pulls. In fact, most of the hardware pictured was NOT in the store or available for special order. How is that company even in business?? A-Ma-Zing

After several store visits, we settled on Elliot’s. The slogan at Elliot’s is “We Have Hardware”….and HAVE hardware they did. We should have started our search there. They had just what we wanted. They came in several sizes: 5 1/2 inches for the drawers, 7 1/2 inches for the cabinet doors…and for the pantry handles? They had 11 1/2 inches. Much more substantial than the little nubs currently on them.

Perfect, right? Well almost perfect. The handles had these weird little squares at the bases. More deco than modern. Fortunately, we just left them off.

Way, More, Much, Better.

I used the same top holes for the door handles….and the drawer handles we positioned up slightly from where they were.

The tiny screw holes we filled in with Elmer’s Natural Wood Filler. We hardly even see them now.

What about those way-too-small handles on the pantry doors? They look like this now.

When my dear friend Laura, who moved to St. Louis a few years ago, asked me to do the flowers for her wedding…my first thought was all white… or white with lime green. Isn’t that what most typical brides want these days?

Then I got the “Save-The-Date” card.

And the invitation…..

See what I mean?

This was definitely not a “white floral” wedding, or typical bride. Her gown, after all, was going to be navy. Laura and I agreed that her floral colors would be; bubble gum pink, orange, turquoise, purple, chartreuse, and lipstick red. Rick, the groom-to-be, likes whatever Laura likes….isn’t that easy?

Having never been to St. Louis, Jamie and I spent the day before the wedding taking in the sights…. which is pretty much just the Gateway Arch.

They don’t tell you this before hand, but the trip up to the top of the St Louis Arch is Scary-as-Hell. I do NOT recommend it if you are acrophobic, or even slightly claustrophobic. The accent to the observation deck is in an almost windowless pea-shaped car the size of 1/4 of a Fiat. It took us, and the 4 other hefty midwestern strangers shoved in there with us, 4 minutes to get up there in that round coffin…..coming down it take 3 minutes. Thank you gravity. They also forget to mention that the arch swings from side-to-side. It’s supposed to be “slight”, most people don’t even notice. Jamie and I are most definitely NOT “most people”. We both felt the swinging immediately. After a 2 hour wait, AND a 4 minute nightmare inducing accent, we lasted about 1 minute and a half before we had enough swaying at 600 feet in the air.

Still worth doing if you’re ever in St Louis….but I only recommend it for the truly fearless. Like bungee jumping naked.

We mailed everything we needed ( vases, votives, tools, buckets, a watering can, ribbon, everything…) weeks before the ceremony. All we had to do was pick up the pre-ordered flowers from the wholesaler before the 2 hour drive to the Chaumette winery in Missouri wine country. Did you know that Missouri had a wine country? We didn’t either.

Here’s our flowers soaking up water in our hotel room before we moved everything to the rental car. Mostly roses, but there are also pincushion Protea, chartreuse spider mums, tulips, Dianthus, and Hypericum.

After a 2 hour drive through twisty Missouri back roads, we arrived at our “UN-Map Questable” destination. Just look how beautiful the Chaumette Winery is…..

The cabin we stayed in was in this clump somewhere…I think the bridal party took up most of these cabins. They were A-Ma-Zingly cozy. Our cabin had plenty of room to do the centerpieces. We opened our french doors overlooking a pasture full of cows while we worked on the centerpieces.

The ceremony was held in a charming free-standing chapel on a hill overlooking the breath-taking winery property.

Laura wanted silk hand-tied flowers for the chapel so she could save them and make a wreath later. We made them in advance and shipped them with all our supplies.

They look very close to the “real” flowers we used for the reception. Dalias and Peonies were on the bill for the fresh centerpieces, but unavailable in April…so it was good to at least have some represented in silk.

I love pictures of the bride and groom right after the ceremony. Bubbles all around.

The reception was in the wine barrel storage room, an intimate spot under the main tasting room of the winery.

Jamie and I wrapped ribbon around cylinder vases in advance…and then picked up those colors in votives from an online candle site. All of Laura’s colors look extra vibrant on simple white cloths.

Laura likes a little sparkle…if you look closely there are tiny colored rhinestones set into the flowers.

Since the room was so intimate, we filled it with colored votives and synthetic gems to reflect all the candle light. The bride’s mother found these cylinder vases, they were just perfect to bring some height to the mantle.

As soon as I saw these gems, I knew that Laura would just love them. The candlelight made them glisten like “real” jewels.

An A-typical bride would never have a typical wedding cake. Ding Dongs, Twinkies, Ho Hos…..Oh My. We stacked the Hostess treats on tiered cake plates.

Even the cake topper was a one-of-a-kind idea..tokidokis of Ciao Ciao and Adios….the ” ‘Till Death Do Us Part ” couple.

Happy First Anniversary Rick and Laura.

We had a great time at your wedding, and we’re so thrilled that we could have been a part of it as well.

Like this:

Neither of us are wine drinkers. The Good Lord knows that I prefer the occasional beer, and I push Jamie towards Rum and Coke for his “Peace and Quiet Juice”.

Sometimes, I will buy a bottle of wine if the label is cool.

You know, if there is something awesome on it, like a cowboy or a red truck. ( I’m not joking here….those 2 images will Always get me to purchase )

Somehow we have ended up a with a pretty good assortment of wine….must be from hostess gifts.

I had a plan to create some sort of “wine storage” over our pantry…..where there was nothing before. I don’t quite understand why the previous owner didn’t take the pantry all the way to the ceiling? Something had to be done in this wasted space.

When I saw this picture in a magazine, I was fascinated by the concrete tubes he used for wine. Look at how cool those graphic circles look in this kitchen. A little modern, a little rustic…..just like our style.

Aren’t they just groovy as all Hell? I know! We had to find a way to do this in our own kitchen; and that empty space over the pantry seemed like just the right spot.

I Googled concrete tubes…and nada came up. But ya know what did? PVC…HHmmm That could actually work.

They’re cheap – about 15$ for 10 feet.

I could cut them easily to any size that I needed with the chop saw.

A 4 inch thick pipe fits a bottle of wine just perfectly.

They are light weight, so very little stress on the press-board cabinet

Just one slight problem with our plan….the space over the pantry is was only 12 inches tall. That’s hardly enough space to do more that 14 PVC pipes, and I would have to fill in a lot of empty space with trim pieces to make it all fit tight.

But ya know where they would fit? Over the fridge…. in this weird space

Remember the Ikea cabinet that didn’t have any corresponding doors? It’s 24 inches tall. I know! It’s almost as if it were “meant” to be.

We cut 10 Foot PVC pipes down to 10 inch sections. ..They only come in 10 foot pipes. 10 foot poles are a bitch to transport, but we live pretty close to H-Depot. I wish the cut pipes fit more perfectly linear, like my inspiration kitchen, but the staggered pipe is still kinda modern to me. Just slightly more “honey comb” looking.

Now we have space for 21 bottles or wine.

I had to move the shelf up just slightly. The pegs holes are staggered about every inch, and my pipes pushed the shelf up about 1/2 inch. No worries, all I had to do was drill 4 more holes directly in between where Ikea thought they should be. I could have ditched the shelf altogether and filled the whole cabinet with PVC tubes, but I didn’t want to over do it with the wine.

Then the extra peg holes started to bother me. It just didn’t look finished.

That’s Elmer’s Wood Filler in Natural. We had already used it to fill the holes where the old drawer handles used to be.

It’s not a perfect match with birch, but it works for us.

We ended up with something that looks more like this…

Pretty Cool, I know!

“And whatever became of that wasted 12 inches of space over the pantry?” you ask.

We used an extra Ikea shelf, some 1X2 trim, and the disassembled pieces from the old cabinet over the microwave…..and came up with this to store cookbooks.

It was agreed that we definitely didn’t NEED any new appliances…..that it was entirely a “want” situation.

Since we had been aiming all our cash towards this kitchen upgrade, we just didn’t have the extra funds for new appliances right now. Maybe in a year or two.

With Jamie out of town, I thought I would surprise him and buy a new stainless range the old-fashioned American way……..on credit. By “Surprise”, I meant that the shiny new range would just be sitting in the kitchen when he returned from his trip….weather he thought we needed a new one or not. It honestly never occurred to me that if I listed him as a credit reference that the store would actually call him.

Of course they did.

So much for the surprise…..

This Samsung range has everything we could need; a convection oven, 5 burners – including a huge one in the middle for making paella (like that will ever happen…but it could), it’s self-cleaning, and most importantly…It LOOKS cool. All stainless sleekness with a touch of industrial restaurant. And it’s WWWAYYYY cooler than what we have been cooking on/with for over 2 years.

This was the range of our dreams, if Viking had never been created…..or Smeg…….or Meile…..

Actually, this was the “In-Our-Price-Range” of our dreams.

Now for the drama….I’ll try to condense it to bullet points…

The delivery was set for 9 am, they showed up at 8:15 PM

The delivery truck clipped a power line and knocked out the power for the entire neighborhood

We called 911

The delivery guys couldn’t connect the gas line in the dark, so they were going to bring it back some time in the next week

We weren’t having that

They left it in our living room

We tried to connect the gas line ourselves

I smelled gas

We aborted the plan to connect it ourselves

The delivery company couldn’t connect the gas line for several days

Jamie went to the appliance store to ask the store manager for help in person

Jamie returned with a matching dishwasher that she sold him

Here’s the new range sitting in our living room. Almost made it to the kitchen….

Here’s the new dishwasher also sitting patiently in our garage…

Enter our friend Jimmy, who had the old dishwasher yanked out and the new one connected in about 10 minutes.

The range , after several phone calls, was finally properly connected to the gas line Monday afternoon……

Just look at “The New Hotness”!

We celebrated with chocolate chip cookies.

“And what became of the “old” black appliances?” you ask. We donated them to Habitat For Humanity….they even picked them up. That was the easiest part.